Teenagers love to swear. Says who? Says science you melon farmers. And what could be better than a top ten of teenage swearing compiled by science wielding psycholinguists? A US – UK show down. Let the cursing commence.

The book Trends in Teenage Talk: Corpus Compilation, Analysis and Findings was written to summarise the findings of research on the word use of teenagers in London.

In Chapter 4, on slang and swearing, the authors compare the frequency of swear words in London teens to the same from an earlier study in East Coast American adolescents.

First the Londoners:

And now on to the East Coast Americans:

I would first like to express my disappointment that the word bollocks is being neglected by UK teenagers.

Unfortunately, a decline in social standards and a lack of respect for tradition is leading to a generation of ****ing obsessed adolescents.

Indeed, one of the great pleasures of this eminently British tradition is the low level of recognition among Americans, meaning bollocks can be used openly in the States without causing offence.

However, the small sample size of the American data means it may not be the most reliable guide to the true population ranking.

I note, for example, that there are only 27 b****es and 24 asses which may mean that the true b**** – ass prevalence is being obscured by random variation in the sample.